WORKING FROM HOME

I'm working from home today. It's just as well. It's been snowing overnight.

The world did look different. Trees were laced with white, the tops of fences were piled with neat lines of snow. The cars were blanketed, the path was smooth and the garden, untouched, pristine, like the top of the Christmas cake.

It made me smile, like a little victory - finally, something unusual to talk about, something which paints everything a different colour, which stirs up a little childhood excitement and lets you catch a glimpse of an old-fashioned kind of winter.

Plus, I didn't have to go anywhere in it. I flipped open the work laptop, took a deep breath and logged in.

It's quite productive, working from home. A few years ago, I read an article, a TED thing I think it was, about the two greatest hindrances to efficiency. I don't think the writer was joking either - he suggested that they were meetings and managers. Working from home seems like a pretty neat way of eliminating both of those.

Meetings are dreadful, aren't they? I mean, some are useful, but most seem to be a collection of people who'd really rather be somewhere else, doing something else, talking about something else, with other people. Sometimes, it feels like everyone is racing through the agenda, just to get to the blessed end.

I don't want to get to the 'blessed end' and realise that I spent my life in meetings, discussing other meetings and planning more meetings about the work that I'm supposed to be doing in-between meetings.

As for managers... well, managers are managed and so must manage. That's the system, as far as I can work it out. To be honest, I don't know why anyone aspires to 'management'; who wants to 'manage', to 'cope', to 'hold it together'? Not me, boss. I'd much rather be a leader, I think - and there's a chasm of difference between the two. My theory is that, in order to 'cope with' people, to 'manage' them, you have to sort of keep an eye on what they're doing. That requires a system of administration which feels a bit like a gigantic game of buckaroo... and most of the time, I think I'd rather get on with work than play a round of spreadsheet buckaroo.

So home I am, eating crisps and listening to Glenn Miller and The Sound of The Thirties. Out there, in the white world of melting snow, of collared doves and prowling cats leaving paw prints in the garden... everything is nice and quiet.